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Comment by newswasboring | Hacker News Reader

Honestly the main reason seems to be that it looks less intimidating. Open vi and no help is offered in terms of commands, it's just an empty screen. Same for Emacs i think. Nano looks like something built for humans.

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This is the greeting text that is displayed when you launch Vim [1]:

    VIM - Vi IMproved
    
    version 8.2.4133
    by Bram Moolenaar et al.
    
    Vim is open source and freely distributable
    
    Help poor children in Uganda!
    type  :help iccf<Enter>       for information 
    
    type  :q<Enter>               to exit         
    type  :help<Enter>  or  <F1>  for on-line help
    type  :help version8<Enter>   for version info
    
    Running in Vi compatible mode
    type  :set nocp<Enter>        for Vim defaults
    type  :help cp-default<Enter> for info on this

"No help offered" or "just an empty screen" is not how I would describe the above text.

[1]: https://github.com/vim/vim/blob/a96edb736d4274fc4aea46080078...

OP was specifically referencing vi, not vim

Most of the time I've seen people get stuck in vim is when they use "git commit" which opens up whatever you have $EDITOR set to. The default value in most distros I've used in vim/vi and I can't recall seeing usage help in that scenario.

True, but at least it points you to the :help command at the beginning of its man page and pressing ctrl-c tells you how you can quit.

What distros do you use? One of my ongoing irritations with Ubuntu is that the default editor is not VIM.

Just change it to what you want.

I do... every time :)

Y'know, now that you mention it, I don't recall changing the default editor in Ubuntu. I think I first noticed vi or vim as the default editor in Fedora around 6 years ago, and maybe also in git bash on Windows. Beyond that, my memory is hazy, but I think vi or vim is the default in Debian and RHEL/CentOS, but I wouldn't put money on it.

I voiced my strong support when they changed the standard git editor on my distro from vim to nano. While I'm still playing with the thought of really getting into vim and/or emacs at some point, nano is just a much simpler, more familiar type of editor. Seems like a lot of other people also felt that way. Depending on your user base it might make sense to stick to vim though, in case you'd disappoint your more technical/unixy users.

I’ve always had the idea that EDITOR should be on the same level as the login shell on nix systems. Choose your shell and your editor when creating your account, or don’t complain about the defaults

I agree but I’ve found that a lot of users don’t know they can set EDITOR in their shell profile – or that the `chsh` command exists to let them change their login shell.

Yeah the “create your account” part of the install should expose a few more settings such as the above, or perhaps a more generic “user account settings” pane in the major DEs to show the most common environment configurations for user accounts

I am one of those that didn't know chsh was a thing - thanks for the tip!

As a Vim user I agree. People who don't know about this environment variable might also not be very familiar with Vim. It helps nobody to surprise people like that.

Also I like to use Vim's terminal buffer, and it turns out accidentally starting Vim inside Vim rarely leads to satisfying results.

I have ended up in vim by accident on quite a number of occasions over the last few decades, but I have never seen the quoted text. Perhaps it is something you only see if you are trying to use vim on purpose?

The Emacs welcome screen links to a tutorial, a guided tour, and manual, all of which are inside Emacs. I would say its help functionality is potentially its greatest strength.

Right, but when nano first opened for me, I didn't need a help or manual. That's what I mean by it feeling like it was made for humans.

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